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Despite his emphasis on the growing military threat from Moscow, Nitze has long believed that "working the problem" of the Soviet challenge also requires dogged and imaginative diplomacy. As a result, he has occasionally aroused the suspicion and enmity of the right. The McCarthyite press attacked him in the early '50s because of his association with the "Red Dean," Acheson, and Republican Senator Barry Goldwater and Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond tried, in vain, to prevent his confirmation to the Navy job a decade later.
Centrist Republicans, however, regarded Nitze -- a Democrat since 1952 -- as an asset to bipartisan foreign policy. In 1969 Nixon personally asked Nitze to help launch the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. He played a key part in negotiating the SALT I treaty of 1972 and worked on SALT II until he resigned in 1974, accusing Nixon of making too many concessions for the sake of an agreement that might save his embattled presidency from the effects of the Watergate scandal.
Nitze was an early supporter of Jimmy Carter for President. But their relationship turned sour when Nitze gave Carter a hair-raising briefing on the Soviet threat in Plains, Ga., in July 1976. Recalling that meeting, the former President told TIME, "Nitze was typically know-it-all. He was arrogant and inflexible. His own ideas were sacred to him. He didn't seem to listen to others, and he had a doomsday approach." Carter barred him from consideration for a senior post.
Nitze seemed to take his revenge against his former friends and colleagues who fared better in the new Administration. One was Paul Warnke, who had worked closely with Nitze in the Pentagon during Lyndon Johnson's presidency. When Warnke was nominated to be Carter's chief arms-control negotiator, Nitze savaged him in congressional testimony, impugning his integrity and patriotism. In 1979, as a founder and leading spokesman for the Committee on the Present Danger, Nitze did more than any other single individual to block ratification of the SALT II treaty, although today Nitze says he was merely trying to promote a "dialogue on the pros and cons of the treaty."
Some of Nitze's longtime acquaintances see a pattern to what might seem like vindictive behavior. Says Ralph Earle, a lawyer who worked with Nitze in the Pentagon -- and against him during the battle over SALT II: "When he is an insider, he is part of the solution to the challenge of arms control; when he is an outsider, he is part of the problem -- an implacable obstructionist." Warnke argues that Nitze illustrates a corollary to Lord Acton's famous adage: "Power corrupts, but the loss of power corrupts absolutely." Nitze rejects and resents the charge: "On a number of occasions in my career I have quit jobs when I disagreed with policy. I'm not just interested in being part of the Government; I'm interested in the Government being right."
Nitze's opposition to SALT II earned him favor with the Reagan camp in 1980, and in the next year he was made chief negotiator for the INF talks, giving him an opportunity to become part of the solution again. A number of proponents of arms control hailed the appointment, including some who had felt the sting of Nitze's denunciatory passion. Predicted Warnke six years ago: "Paul Nitze will force this Administration to make progress in spite of itself."